A
really easy way to help make your home look more valuable is to clean your
windows. If I were to go see a home that has been recently put on the market, I
would expect the house to look its best. When windows aren’t even clean, it
makes me wonder how much effort the homeowners have put into taking care of the
rest of the home if they can’t simply clean the windows. Windows are a pricey
investment to replace. Make yours look like a million dollars. I know that it’s
very do-able because I remember my Dad and I cleaning the windows every summer
at home when I was younger. While we cleaned the windows he taught me a very
valuable lesson, as long as you clean the glass, screens and maintain the inner
workings of the window, they will hold their value that much longer and they
will look brand new for that much longer. The moral of the story is, the effort
you put into looking after something, the longer it will last and the longer it
will hold its value. I also want to point out that, if you don't have the time to clean windows or if you aren't able to, you can always hire someone to do it for you.

2.Make sure beds are clean and well
put together. This goes without saying. When you enter a bedroom and the bed
isn’t made then the entire room is put into chaos. Pillows are tossed around…
this whole thing can easily make the room feel smaller. It is so important to
show your home with a well-made bed because in a bedroom, the bed is the focal
point of the room.

Visual clutter can be as simple as having too
many products on the vanity in a bathroom, or too many books on a bookshelf.
Less is more group items together on a surface whether it is a bedside table or
bookshelf. Make groupings of 3 or 5 – always-odd number of items grouped
together never even. It is also a good idea to vary the heights of the items
that are grouped. This creates interest and depth of the grouping.

4.A Clean Home is so Much Nicer to
View than a Dirty Home

Before every viewing, make sure that the
floors are vacuumed, no pet hair lying around, no dust bunnies, make sure the
bathrooms are clean! This is a major room in the home – you want it to look
it’s best!! Make sure the towels are hanging neatly on the towel bar, make sure
they are the same colour, make sure the vanity counter is clean, no toothpaste
or any other gummies on the surface, make sure the mirror is clean, no spit
marks, and also (the biggest thing) to make sure it is clean is the toilet.
This is a major thing! Also make sure the floor around the toilet is clean.
Like I noted before, if certain areas of the home don’t appear to be taken care
of then the potential clients will start to wonder how much money they will
need to put in the home to update and replace things.

When pulling up to your home, the first thing
that people will notice is the yard and lawn. One way to make your property
really pop is to cut the grass, trimming around trees, up the driveway, weed
the flowerbeds, trim any perennials that have grown a little wild over the
years and rake up any clumps of grass (if the grass was long) because these
grass clippings will inevitably turn brown and won’t add anything to the value
of the yard.

If you
were staying at a hotel, you wouldn’t expect the bed to unmade and messy, you
wouldn’t expect the bathroom to be dirty; you wouldn’t expect to see someone
else’s dirty clothes strewn about the room. All you expect when entering the
room is it to be clean, without a funny smell and the bed all made up. Staging
and showing your home is all about making the best first impression.

Sunday, 17 August 2014

When I was designing my office space, I had 3 things in mind that I
wanted to keep in mind, a comfortable place to work at my desk, a place to draw
and a place to sit and read.

Keeping those three things in mind, I designed a space that
encompassed all of the above. I only have a 10’x10’ space, but that is big enough for me and my
office wants and would likes! I also wanted to keep in mind that down the road,
I would like to (possibly) be able to have clients in my office and have ample
room to present ideas to them either on a board or on my drafting table.

With already having two pieces of
furniture in the space, my drafting table and a bookshelf, I had them to work into
the design and after researching different styles of desks and various ideas
for desk-like pieces I came up with this. I liked its simple design and the
nice, white surface that added a simple, clean feeling to the space. I also
loved the glass top that came with it.And to keep pens, charging cables, earplugs, notebooks or any other desk
stuff, it has a drawer that is the full width of the desk itself. The best part
is, is that it isn’t a desk at all; it’s a dressing table!

When I was checking out ideas for a
desk, I didn’t want the typical roll out keyboard
tray, or the roll out compartment to fit the printer. I just wanted a simple
workspace to place and charge my laptop on and work at ie. Write articles for
the blog, do consultations over the phone, just a simple spot to just work at
that didn’t have holes for cables on the
surface of the desk, or any other desk paraphernalia. I was looking for
something different (out of the norm) that you wouldn’t consider being a desk. I didn’t need anything too deep, because it
would take up valuable floor space in the room but I wanted enough room, but
not too much room to be able to set my notebook aside while I work with my
mouse or reference documents. I also didn’t
want the piece to look too heavy and solid in the space because I didn’t want the room to feel closed in
when you looked into the office while passing by the door.

I chose the white finish for the
desk and bookshelf (which has a similar design to the desk) because I was
inspired by my Greece trip I took with my fiancé a year ago in April. The Greeks have a simple colour scheme over
there that I really liked, simple, white and blues or other colours to accent,
but it was mainly a lovely Mediterranean blue. So I took that inspiration and
wanted it in my office. I wanted my office to feel light and simple, and then
the glass top added a professional touch on the desk itself. I also purchased a
chair that matches the desk and bookshelf, being that it is white as well with
simple metal u-shaped legs.

So far this is my plan and how I
have arranged my office. Baby steps, I’ll
slowly add accents like a reading chair (nothing too big or too bulky for the
space) and a table to place a reading lamp on and other little accents to add
colour and texture to the space.

In the future, I will probably add some kind of window treatment and possibly an area rug and I would like to put a mural or something on the wall behind my chair. Work in progress, but as I updated I will add pictures to this post to keep you up-to-date!

When we come
to your home, we will sit down and discuss with the homeowner what areas of the
home the homeowners feel needs to be addressed. If there are certain areas that
the homeowner just doesn’t feel right, whether it’s the layout of the furniture
or the lighting or the colours of the room. We jot that down on our notes and
then proceed to tour the home.

We also
assess the outside of the home for curb appeal. This means we will assess the
home from the street to see how appealing it looks from the potential
homebuyer’s point of view. This should be the most important part of the
assessment because this is the first thing the viewers see before entering the
home.There are many things we look for
when assessing the outside of the home; such as trimming shrubs, clean windows,
if yard maintenance should be done (which it should be done on a regular basis)
but paying special attention to certain areas.

It is
amazing what strangers or visitors see in your home or outside of your home
that you don’t normally see because we grow too used to things that we see on a
regular basis.This is why a Home Stager
is so valuable, they come with a critical eye and assess the home both inside
and out and they know what needs to be changed, added or taken away to make the
home look it’s best.

Saturday, 16 August 2014

When you are meeting someone for the first time, you want to
make sure that you are looking your very best, whether this be on a first date
or for a job interview or meeting your significant other’s parents for the
first time…. Bottom line is, when you are meeting someone for the first time,
you want to make a good first impression.You want to make sure you’re wearing nice, clean clothes, with your hair
combed and looking your best, to impress.You wouldn’t partake in any of these appointments with terrible hygiene
and wrinkly clothes; bad breath and body odour would you? Of course you
wouldn’t.

So for something that is worth so much to you, something
that you’re hoping to get a greater return from when selling it, why wouldn’t
you want to show off this major investment in the best possible light possible?

Home Staging isn’t a gimmick, Home Staging isn’t a quick,
simple thing and Home Staging isn’t invaluable!

Home Staging is important when selling a home because you
hire someone who has never seen the home before. For the Stager, it is a clean
slate. A Home Stager will come in and assess the home, with an unbiased opinion
and evaluate the home right away and make a list of what needs to be done to
it, to make it more market ready to list it to sell.

Sometimes when you have lived in a home for a long period of
time, its easy to become accustomed to what is in the home. Certain pieces of
furniture being in certain spots, not changing a wall colour or flooring, growing
comfortable with the accessories and pictures around the home, that make it
your home. Except a Home Stager comes in and assess it from a homebuyer’s point
of view.The Home Stager knows right
away what needs to be changed or moved around or updated to sell the home for
the greatest market value that it can receive.

A Home Stager is extremely valuable because, to the Home
Stager, the home that they are assessing isn’t their own personal space. The
Home Stager doesn’t see the memories that took place within the home. So the
Stager doesn’t have a personal connection to the home and has the ability to
judge the space, without having an emotional connection.

I believe that is the biggest issue with homeowners and
selling their home. They have an emotional connection to the homes that they are
selling. Therefore it is hard to know what needs to be packed away, what needs
to be moved around or what needs to be updated. Homeowners will tend to think “well
it’s worked well enough for me to have the table and chairs there, it should
work well enough for someone else” or “I’m not going to bother changing that or
spending the money to change that when the next owners are just going to rip it
down and build something better anyway”. But the reality is, you don’t know
what the next owners are going to do to the space. Maybe the next owners don’t
have a great deal of money and would be quite content with having things the
way they are left in the space, because they don’t have the money to update it
right away.The bottom line is, if by
making changes around the home would make the house sell better, make them. If
it emphasizes the home and its features, make the change.

It’s amazing how such a little change can make a big
difference to a home.

Investing in a Home Stager will be much less than a selling
reduction and you will realize the greatest potential return on your investment
in the smallest amount of time!